News

All ORICA-AIS riders in top twenty prologue Euskal Emakumeen Bira

Wed 10 Jun 2015

The beginning of the Spanish five day race Euskal Emakumeen Bira was marked by a 1900 metres long individual time trial. The ORICA-AIS ladies were off to an amazing start of the race, all finished within the top 20.

Australian Garfoot was off to a good start in the prologue and finished with an impressive two minutes and exactly thirty seconds. She quickly claimed the fastest time and remained the provisional leader until van Vleuten finished only a mere second faster.

Sports director Gene Bates is pleased with today’s results: “We’re off to an excellent start here. There was still so much productivity present from yesterday’s stage, where Emma Johansson won. All the girls were so excited for this race to start and are looking forward to the rest of the week."

“Katrin was off to a really good start, she had a fantastic ride today. All our girls are in the top 20, they’ve all obtained great times. The girls rode so strongly today.

“It was a pretty straightforward course, a very short, slow version of a time trial. These short time trial are pretty simple, you start off as fast as you can, and then you take it home even stronger. The weather was also in our advantage. It had been raining all day, but the rain held off during the actual time trial, so we were lucky.

“Today was a good warm up for the days to come. The girls are confident for tomorrow, the team currently has a lot of momentum and a good feeling. We have a few riders that can go for the overall, but we don’t have the burden to protect the leader’s jersey yet, so we’re able to start in the best position possible.”